City leaders say change in street widths to have no immediate effect on parking

Saying that the current rules are creating "freeways through neighborhoods" as well as a whole host of non-compliant streets, the city council voted unanimously Tuesday night to reduce the required unobstructed width of all streets in Kyle from 24 to 20 feet.

The council’s action will have no actual effect on parking on any existing streets in Kyle. Those changes would require council to enact additional ordinances.

‘The current fire code that we already adopted actually requires 40-foot street widths in order to park on both sides," Mayor Todd Webster said. "Under our current ordinance, no street in the town is compliant. You couldn’t park on both sides of a street anywhere in Kyle and be in compliance with our current ordinances. So instead of having ordinances that don’t allow parking on our streets, let’s have an ordinance that allows for parking on at least one side.."

The unobstructed width is basically the width of a road minus the feet (usually six or seven on each side) allowed for parked cars..

Last August the council amended the ordinance to provide a 24-foot unobstructed road width even though the International Fire Code recommended a 20-foot width. (For what it’s worth, Austin mandates a 25-foot unobstructed width.)

"We realized 24 is creating freeways through neighborhoods," Fire Chief Kyle Taylor told the council. "The 20 is really what we need for Kyle."

Webster asked Taylor if the measure would apply to already existing streets.

"Yes, because if we kept it at 24 feet, no one would be able to legally park on any street in Kyle," Taylor said. "We’re going to do a study. We’re going to look at the streets and figure out which ones cause fire trucks, school buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks the most issues. Lowering this to 20 feet will help us move the parking to one side. If we kept it at 24, any road under 40 feet, nobody could park on."

Webster then asked City Attorney Frank Garza if the council needed to enact additional parking restrictions to enforce the street width regulations.

"The City of Kyle as a home rule has exclusive jurisdiction over its streets," Garza said. "So you have full authority. If there’s any issues or complaints with regards to whether there’s parking or not parking or to disallow parking or allow parking as a result of emergency vehicles being able to get through, you have that exclusive jurisdiction. As long as it’s a public street, you can regulate where vehicles are parked."

Garza then affirmed Webster’s observation that the method for doing that would be to amend separate ordinances that already exist. It is worth noting that Kyle has no separate and distinct parking ordinance and most city ordinances regulating parking most likely exist within neighborhood platting agreements.

"I’m trying to understand whether this action supercedes other things related to parking," Webster said. "Is this action going to trigger some sort of change in the parking scenarios that exist in our most famous neighborhood?"

"We have issues in other neighborhoods as well," Taylor interjected. "It’s not just one."

"I know," Webster replied. "It’s pretty clear, from what I’ve heard, that any change related to parking — people don’t want change. Which side of the street is it going to be, you’re going to end up with a fight if you’re going to make any changes to this. I understand, when you’re moving forward , when you have something like this it’s going to impact future development and I’m supportive of that. I’m not sure how disruptive we have to be with the current parking situations."

Taylor said social media reaction to the proposed change indicated many residents thought "we were going to go into Plum Creek with a tape measure. That just isn’t true. We would like to address some of the roads in Plum Creek — mainly the ones that go all the way around the neighborhood. Those are the tough ones we have to travel."

Council member Shane Arabie asked Taylor to explain how the International Fire Code determined how cars are allowed to be parked on city streets. Taylor said the code requires a minimum of unobstructed widths of 10-feet in each direction on a typical two-way street. The code considers a car to be seven feet wide, so that would mean a two-lane street that permitted parking one side of that street must be at least 27-feet wide.

"But the code gives you a little bit of leeway," he said. "If you’re going to park on one side, we’re going to make it nine feet . So you have 19-feet unobstructed plus seven for the car so 26 feet of roadway gets you parking on one side. When you go to parking on both sides, you get the same thing. They’ll give you nine feet. So now you’re down to 18-feet unobstructed with 14 feet for your cars."

Tuesday’s meeting was the second consecutive comparatively brief meeting, this one clocking in at one hour and 59 minutes, nine minutes shorter than the April 18 record-setting affair. And if you subtracted the time consumed by the Citizen Comment period, a presentation from the Kyle Area Youth Advisory Council and the executive session, the actual meeting took only 55 minutes. All items requiring council action passed on 5-0 votes (council members Becky Selbera and Daphne Tenorio missed Tuesday’s meeting, leaving the fate of the city in the hands of five while males). Other significant items that emerged from the meeting included:

• The City of Kyle agreed to partner with BioDAF Water Technologies of Golden, Colo., to demonstrate that BioDAF has this incredible technology for clarifying wastewater that is 360 times faster than current methods and, thus, should be approved for use statewide by the Texas Department of Environmental Quality. According to BioDAF President, Business Development Marcos De la Monja the new technology is a process for removing sediments from waste water. "Instead of waiting for everything to settle down, we induce wastewater and we induce air into the water at a very high pressure. Once the water reaches atmospheric pressure, the air breaks from the water and it lifts everything up. In under three minutes, you clarify water that takes maybe 18-plus hours to clarify using current methods." Webster said if the technology works as advertised it could save the city a lot of money in operational costs at future wastewater plants.
• Some clarification on the resolution to provide for a possible annexation and de-annexation. This was not the actual changing of the city’s boundaries — that will come at a later date, if at all, following a couple of public hearings — this was simply a move that allows the city to move ahead with the idea. Apparently the move is being made to bring into the city an area of the Blanco River Ranch that was originally planned for residential development, but will now feature commercial development and to take out land set aside for residential. This action will allow developers to institute PIDs in the residential areas that don’t amount to double taxation as do PIDs within the city’s limits.
• Artura Guerra, president of Guerra Underground, told the council the main reason his company encountered delays that required a change order to his construction contract for a wastewater line along Center Street was because he was literally caught between a rock and a hard place. "The largest contributor to the delays was the hardness of the rock," Guerra told the council. He said his company had to dig a trench for a water main near Yarrington Road in South Kyle and while that ground was hard, it could be dug. He said the company expected similar conditions along Center Street and bid on the project accordingly. :We didn’t have specific information on how hard the rock was in that particular part of town," he said.